Brake Headache

I have been noticing some un-normal things going on with the brakes in Hercules. I first noticed squeaking every time I pressed on the brakes. I I took it to the folks who would do tire work for me and they said that I had really good brakes. I chalked it up to road dirt and grime. Then I started noticing a vibration in the pedal when the brakes were applied. I again took it in to be looked at and was told that the brakes were fine. They looked at me like I was complaining just to complain. Then started the grinding noise from the back. I jacked it up myself and took the tire off and lo and behold, the pad on the passenger side was 99.9%. It was almost metal on metal. The squeaker was worn clean off. The upside was that the rotor was still good. There was just barely enough pad that it protected the rotor enough that I could reuse it. I am tired of people not working on my vehicles correctly. I used to do my own brakes all the time, especially disc brakes. I'm not comfortable doing my own drum brakes without someone's help, but disc are a cinch. I tore into it and the first thing I noticed was how hard it was to take the bolts off. That's because they're all Loctited on. I have never used Loctite on brake calipers. I don't care if it's a Geo Prism or a 1 ton truck, if you tighten your bolts good enough, odds are, they'll stay put. I even find myself in the camp of people who use anti-seize on the bolts. I also pull the bleeders and use a very thin layer of anti-seize on them too. I've never had trouble with it in all of my years, even on ABS systems. When I got to the other side of the truck, I noticed the pads had over half left. Upon closer inspection, the brakes were seized in the holders and hadn't worked in some time. I had to pound the piss out of them to get them out of the holders. Since they hadn't been working, rust had built up worse on that caliper vs. the other side and the metal was starting to corrode and rot. What a mess. I figured I would go get the parts and save myself a lot of money. I attaked the problem "old school" style. I bought all the components separately. I saw complete caliper kits available for $70, but I figured the calipers were good. The rubbers looked good on them and there wasn't any sign of fluid anywhere on them, so they should have been re-usable. However, the corrosion that had accumulated on the non-working brake unit proved too much for the bleeder as it was corroded beyond saving. Here's a breakdown of the job and expense:

 Rear Brake Job




Brake Pads - $23

Caliper Hardware Kit – $17

New Bleeders - $4

New Caliper Slide Pins - $9

Impact Socket, T55 - $5.50

2 Qts. Brake Fluid – $8.50

New Caliper and bracket* - $62.00



Total - $129



This doesn’t include 3 trips to West Union for various parts and tools, two trips to Arlington to have calipers put in a vise and bolts broke loose (thank you Uncle Mike), nor the several drill bits that I broke trying to drill out the bleeder valve. My feet were frozen, I was chilled to the bone, and I inhaled more rust, salt, and brake dust than I care to have inhaled. It took nearly 2 ½ days of messing around, and a ton of frustration. I guess in the end, I’m $10 ahead because completely loaded calipers with all new hardware, pads, bolts, etc, are $70 a piece plus tax. That would have been $140 worth of parts, I guess I still would have had to have bought the brake fluid, so I’m like $20 ahead, but I could have had this job done in one trip, saved several drill bits, and had it done in a couple of hours. When it comes time to do the front ones, I’m going to buy the complete caliper sets and be done with it!



* I got the bleeder on the passenger side caliper out fairly easily. I planned on replacing them anyways. The driver’s side one was seized in there and I could not get it out. It didn’t even snap off. It disintegrated. I tried to drill it out and when I got to good steel, it worked the hell out of my drill bits and snapped a few. The threads were seized so bad that I couldn’t get the threads to clean out. I ruined it and had to buy a new caliper. They didn’t have just the caliper, so I had to buy a caliper with a new holder bracket. It was only $7 more than the caliper alone would have cost me.

Two lessons were learned. First, do everything that you possibly can yourself. In other words, don't trust anyone to check your brakes for you. If you can do it yourself, then do it yourself. It isn't their life on the line in they're wrong. It's yours. Secondly, if the calipers are corroded, it's easier to buy complete caliper kits that can be slapped on by simply removing two 18MM bolts and a brake line and reversing the procedure followed by bleeding the system. You'll save yourself a lot of time and hassle.